South Korea\u2019s prime minister and senior presidential officials have offered to resign en masse following Wednesday\u2019s parliamentary elections.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and all senior presidential advisers to conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol submitted their resignations, according to Yoon\u2019s office, after Wednesday\u2019s elections dealt a huge blow to Yeol\u2019s party. The elections secured the liberal opposition forces\u2019 control of parliament until after Yoon completes his single five-year term in 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The results will likely set back Yoon\u2019s domestic agenda and weaken his grip on the party. He will also have to face the opposition\u2019s intensifying political offensive during his remaining three years, experts say.<\/p>\n
Yoon\u2019s office did not immediately say whether Yoon would accept their resignations.<\/p>\n
With most of the votes counted, the main opposition Democratic Party and its satellite party appeared to have won a combined 175 seats in the 300-member National Assembly, according to South Korean media tallies.<\/p>\n
Yoon\u2019s ruling People Power Party was projected to have obtained 108 seats.<\/p>\n
The final official results were expected later Thursday.<\/p>\n
The final voter turnout for South Korea\u2019s 44 million eligible voters was the highest for a parliamentary election since 1992, according to the National Election Commission.<\/p>\n
In a news conference, ruling People Power Party leader Han Dong-hoon announced he was stepping down to take responsibility for the election defeat.<\/p>\n
\u2018I apologize to the people on behalf of our party, which wasn\u2019t good enough to win the people\u2019s choices,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
Yoon, a former top prosecutor who took office in 2022, will stay in power and his major foreign policies will likely be unchanged.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, who lost the 2022 presidential election to Yoon, praised Wednesday\u2019s results.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018The results of the parliamentary elections are not the victory by the Democratic Party, but the great victory by our people,\u2019 Lee said Thursday. \u2018Now, the elections are over. Both the ruling and opposition political parties must pull together all their strength to resolve economic and public livelihood problems.\u2019<\/p>\n
In South Korea, executive power is mostly wielded by the president, but the prime minister is the country\u2019s No. 2 official and would take power if the president becomes incapacitated.<\/p>\n
The incoming parliament is to begin meeting on May 30 for a four-year term.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n\n
South Korea\u2019s prime minister and senior presidential officials have offered to resign en masse following Wednesday\u2019s parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and all senior presidential advisers to conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol submitted their resignations, according to Yoon\u2019s office, after Wednesday\u2019s elections dealt a huge blow to Yeol\u2019s party. The elections secured the liberal <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17846,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}